While going to college, one of my closest friends was a business major. I didn’t hold it against him, but I was mystified as to how a guy that was so clearly interested in things of an artistic nature could piddle away his time in classes about marketing products and the like. Eventually, I prevailed upon this gentleman and he switched his major. Art History might not have been my first choice, but it was a far sight better than what was going on before.

Of course, we both eventually graduated and went our separate ways. He became a business type – I should have been there. But recently he told me he was headed to grad school. I held my breath to hear what for. Could he be getting a master’s in Art History? Nope, business.

You never know how it’s gonna work out. And that’s probably why drummer Pete La Roca eventually became a lawyer named Pete Sims. It was an odd shift, certainly. Given not just his talent, but also the company that he kept, it’s surprising that La Roca would turn the corner as it were.

Beginning his musical career during the ‘60s, La Roca found himself amidst a shifting genre. Yet he was able to play with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean and a few other genuinely gifted composers and players. For a time La Roca was even the house drummer at Boston’s Jazz Workshop. There must be some way to quantify the number of recordings he made there, but it’s well beyond my powers.

Being a lawyer, obviously, curtailed La Roca’s recording career. And even while he was a part of a great many sessions, the drummer led just a handful before putting on that lawyering suit. His 1965 debut, named Basra, doesn’t now find too much commotion surrounding it. But that’s just because folks are daft.

Yeah, the album’s named after the capitol of Iraq and modern listeners should find that bizarre, but socio-political life was a bit different forty five years ago. One might assume that referencing a city in Iraq points towards some Islamic bent to the album. If it’s there, and I don’t think that it is, what the title is most probably referring to are the melodic figures.

“Malaguena,” which opens the disc, actually seems to presage some Pharaoh Sanders stuff from later in the decade. It’s all winding horn lines contributed by Joe Henderson, who finds himself blowing alongside the holy ghost of jazz somehow. It’s a truly inspired moment in his recorded history.

Henderson and his sax would avail themselves to theatrics for the remainder of the disc. But on that first track was something that hadn’t found its way into whatever the mainstream of jazz is, was or would become. Magic is rare in recordings, but somehow it’s present here. And even if the disc isn’t ever going to be anything other than a footnote, it’s a damn fine example of a few relatively unheralded players getting out what they put in. I still wouldn’t have guessed that La Roca would have passed the bar exam, though. It’s supposed to be killer.